Misplaced Wealth - Footballer vs Car Maker

Listening to Radio 1 at lunch I caught the news - first topic is the £100 million/£500,000 a week bid for some Brazillian footballer, second topic is that Honda will be shutting up shop for another couple of months in Swindon, potential job losses, loss of pay and so on due to lack of sales.

Is it just me that finds this all a bit offensive and maybe not the best timing? Whilst many are being made redundant (not at Honda (yet)), loosing homes and so on, Manchester United are making no bones about paying a whole heap of cash for some bloke to turn up and kick pigskin around.

I'm not sure if I should even find it offensive - what am I expecting Kaka to do, give the money to honda? Maybe if I liked football this wouldn't seem so bad?

It's Man City, and they're owned by the Arabs IIRC, so it's pocket change really. You should be more concerned about the government using your money to support failing businesses than some rich bloke flashing his cash! All IMO obviously

Well surely Kaka is more likely to spend the money, than shiek abu whatever is.

So basically by paying kaka he's taking money from some UAE bank account and transfering it to Manchester.

Kaka may then employ plumber etc in Manchester. He might buy a new car in the UK so surely it will help people in the UK.

The people who should be complaining about this are the residents of abu dabai in the UAE. Basically this is their oil money and their extremely rich royal family is just transfering 100m's to Italy / UK.

Although supposedly this is because sport the best value form of advertising and will help abu dabai in the long run with tourism etc.

I do find the numbers associated with the Kaka transfer particularly offensive.

Why? it's not your money, no-one is asking you to take a pay cut, or is robbing small children and old ladies to pay for it. What do you care? When the FA first allowed players to be transferred for profit, eventually a player was sold for £1000, questions were asked in the House at the time. Clubs with access to large sums of money will buy expensive players, and if every one concerned thinks that the deal represents good value, then why worry?

The top (richest) companies will always pay huge amount of money for the best employees, it is the way businesses work.

The fact that football is in the public eye means we hear about these figures and draw conclusions and comparison, other industries also pay silly money, they just don’t broadcast it on the back page of The Sun.

I agree with the comments made by scu98rkr. It's maybe a little naive to suggest that too much of Kaka's wages will make their way into the Manchester economy but some will, also, a huge slice of tax revenue will find it's way to the treasury every week.

It is disgusting. Evan as a Liverpool fan, I think paying even £20 million for a player is abolutely obscene. I can understand players, who have a relatively short working life, wanting to be secure when they can no longer play, but wages of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, are just insane. Especially when you consider that stewards at football grounds, who have a pretty stressful job dealing with large, sometimes unruly crowds, are basically 'volunteers'. And the referees, who take all sorts of abuse from players, fans and the media, are only on modest wages.

And whenever I see the likes of David ****'em, and his meeja whore of a wife, doing work for 'charidee', I just cringe at the absolute hypocrisy.

You do realise that the treasury will get a fraction of what they should do; footballers are notorious for shipping their money out, often pumping it into 'investments' like property, or 'charity activities', so they can avoid paying tax. El Hadji Spitter Djiouf even qualified for legal aid to fight some case, a couple of years ago!

I'm more worried about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, that could lose their jobs. I think that might have slightly more impact on the treasury, than Kaka.

I hope Man City don't just buy the World's best players and win everything, like Chelsea tried to. Because if they do, football will suffer. Mind, they spent sh1tloads last summer, and they're still sh1t.

Read somewhere that after Kaka recovered from a broken back when he was 18 that he decided to do a 10% of his wages Tithe to his church. So 10% of half a million quid a week (or whatever he'll be on) going to a church will be at least be of some help to some people. Wonder how many other footballers contribute??

I think its obscene that anyone earns that amount of money but thats probably just me. I also have an issue with the fact that people who earn that amount of money pay tax at the same rate as someone who earns over 28k but thats a totally seperate arguement. And finally I have an issue with Kerry Katona.

Football is massive it makes a lot of money, so therefore the best players (without whom the game would be nothing) will get a large chunk of that revenue.

the only issue I would have is if life long football fans get priced out of following their team home and away, just to cover a multi millionaires weekly wage. which is unfortunately happening at a lot of premiership and championship clubs.